Tag Archives: primary schools

UNICEF has issued a request for proposal for “Research for Hygiene Behavioural Change among School Children in the Philippines”.

The aim of the consultancy to “craft a simple, scalable and sustainable strategy, program and tools based on the EHCP [Essential Health Care Program] that would lead to improved and sustained hygiene practice and toilet use”.

The EHCP is the Department of Education’s “flagship national health program for promoting group handwashing with soap, group toothbrushing with toothpaste and biannual deworming in public elementary schools”.

The consultancy will build on the findings of the Sustainable Sanitation in Schools Project, which was launched in 2011 by UNICEF, GIZ and Fit for School.

The main research question is: “Does daily group hand washing with soap in school result in the independent practice of hand washing with soap at critical times, particularly after using the toilet in school and before eating/handling food?”

The Filipino spirit of communal unity, ‘Bayanihan’, prevented school toilets provided by UNICEF going unused because of a lack of water. Parents contributed money for the purchase of containers of water in each toilet every school day.

Salag Elementary School, which stands along the highway of the sprawling Siaton town in Negros Oriental, a province in the Central Visayas islands of the Philippines, has long had a problem with a lack of adequate toilets. The school only had two comfort rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls, which are not enough to accommodate a student population of more than 100.

Pupils were often forced to use the nearest bushes and tended to loiter around, missing part of their lessons.

But things changed when Unicef stepped in to address the school’s problem. Teacher Sheila still remembers the day when officials from Unicef came to their school to deliver free goods as well as the good news. “They gave us books and notepads for the students and told us that they will give us comfort rooms. We were so happy when we heard that,” she recalled.

In 2009 all seven classrooms in Salag Elementary School got new toilets.

The provision of toilets is one of the many projects carried out by Unicef in elementary schools belonging to disparity villages in the province to promote school sanitation and hygiene. One of the requirements cited in Unicef’s Child-Friendly School System is for the school to be “healthy” with adequate sanitation and toilet facilities. To date, six elementary schools in disparity villages across the province are now enjoying the sanitation, and privacy, provided by clean comfort rooms courtesy of Unicef which supplied the toilet facilities. The local government units, in return, shouldered the cost of construction.

A grade schooler washes her hands using the water bought with funds from the parents, an initiative inspired by Unicef's health and sanitation campaign in schools. Photo: PIA

However, after the toilets were completed at the Salag Elementary School, it faced a dilemma because it had no piped water supply.

Although the village has a water source, the supply is not sufficient to address the water needs of the village residents. But this did not stop Principal Millard who was determined not to let the toilets go to waste. So he called for a meeting with the teachers and together they came up with an idea to solve the lack of water in the toilets. However, the solution they thought of can only be done with the support from the parents of the students.

So in the next Parent-Teacher Homeroom meeting, Principal Millard presented the solution before the parents- for each parent to contribute money for the purchase of containers of water in each toilet every school day. The principal was not sure if he could convince the parents. With Salag tagged as a disparity area, life in the village is hard and water is scarce and expensive.

But to the principal’s surprise, the parents readily said yes. Now, with the parents chipping in the funds, each classroom’s toilet has up to five gallons of water, enough to address the sanitation needs of around 60 students in each class. All this made possible by the bayanihan spirit among the Salag villagers.

Principal Millard thinks he knows why the parents chipped in.

“This would not have been possible had Unicef not provided the toilets. I don’t think the parents would have agreed to shelling out the money that quickly. They were inspired by what Unicef has done for the school”.

Half of the schools in Karnataka have no toilets. In every fourth high school, girls have to share toilets with boys!

These shocking revelations are among the findings of a nation-wide survey on the condition of schools and schoolchildren conducted by an NGO ‘Pratham’.

Although the survey ‘Assessment Survey Evaluation Research 2009’ (ASER 2009) indicates a marginal improvement for Karnataka in a number of parameters, the State seems to have left this most primordial of needs to nature’s devices. The survey was conducted in October – November 2009 in 133 primary schools and 623 middle and high schools across both government and private schools in all 27 educational districts of the State.

The findings of the survey state that 51.9 per cent of primary schools in the State do not have usable toilets and a further 11.5 per cent do not even have the infrastructure. This marks a steep decline from a ASER 2007 survey, which stated that only a little over 10 per cent of the primary schools had unusable toilets.

Similarly, 48.7 percent of the middle and high schools in Karnataka do not have usable toilets with about 5.5 per cent of them not even having the infrastructure. Toilet facilities in high schools too have seen a sharp decline as ASER 2007 had put the number at around 20 percent.

But perhaps a more damning indictment of the infrastructure at schools in the State is the stark statistic that says that 42 percent of primary schools and 25 percent of middle and high schools have no separate toilets for girls.

In fact, the survey points out that only 35 per cent of the girls’ toilets are usable.

-51.9 pc of primary schools in the state do not have usable toilets
– 48.7 pc of the middle and high schools do not have usable toilets
– 42 pc of primary schools in the state have no separate toilets for girls
– 25 pc of middle and high schools in the state have no separate toilets for girls

For the whole of India, ASER 2009 reported that the percentage of schools with no water or toilet provision is declining over time. Water is available in 75% of government primary schools and 81% of upper primary schools. Useable toilets can be found in over 50% of government schools. Four out of ten government primary schools do not have separate toilets for girls. This number is lower for upper primary schools at 26%. About 12 -15% girls’ toilets are locked and only about 30 – 40% are useable.

The story about students in Dhikpur who get an additional 10 marks in their exams for having a toilet in their house has been reported a year ago in February 2009.

In an update, the same newspaper adds schools give an additional 5 marks in exam to students who only have a temporary toilet in their home. The students have made a made a slogan, “I am proud of having toilet in my house”.

The Dhikpur Village Development Committee (VDC) has now been declared the first open defecation free in the Rapti zone. Anyone who visits Dhikpur VDC has to use toilet. Otherwise, the students will penalize them. Out of 2183 toilets constructed in the VDC, 1433 are concrete and 750 are temporary toilets.

The Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) has signed an agreement with Japan Water Forum Fund to implement a water and sanitation improvement project at primary schools in Dhulikhel Municipality.

The project, which focuses on three schools Chayal Devi Primary School, Kali Devi Primary School and Mandaladevi Primary School, aims to improve hygienic conditions and ensure safe drinking water and proper sanitation in the schools and surrounding community through the School Led Total Sanitation (SLTS) campaign.

The program is integrated with the ongoing Urban and Environmental Improvement Project (UEIP) program of Dhulikhel Municipality. An orientation program on SLTS was conducted to 25 school teachers, school management committee (SMC) and parent teachers association (PTA) on November 10 where they have committed to declare their area as open defecation free (ODF) area.

Read more about SLTS in Nepal in:
Adhikari, S. and Shrestha, N.L. (2008). School led total sanitation : a successful model to promote school and community sanitation and hygiene in Nepal. In: Beyond construction : use by all : a collection of case studies from sanitation and hygiene promotion practitioners in South Asia. London, UK, WaterAid and Delft, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available here

Sanitation is one the issues featured on AusAID’s Global Education Website. The objective of the Global Education Website is to increase the amount and quality of teaching of global education in Australian primary and secondary schools. The site supports the AusAID Global Education Program which aims to raise awareness and understanding among Australian school students of international issues, development and poverty, and to prepare them to live in an increasingly globalised world and to be active citizens shaping better futures.

RUBAGA, Kawempe and Makindye divisions are to benefit from a sh2b [US$ 900,000) water and sanitation project that targets garbage collection and maintenance of hygiene in schools. The one-year project will target primary schools in the divisions. Already, sh100m [US$ 45,000) has been put aside for ventilated pit-latrines, hand-washing equipment and water tanks. […] The Community Integrated Development Initiative will implement the project in collaboration with Kampala City Council.

The project coordinator, Teo Namata, said a survey in the city divisions showed that the sanitation in schools was appalling as the majority lacked latrines. “In one of the schools, we found 900 pupils and only two latrines for all the pupils,” Namata said. She said teachers and pupils will also be trained on how to operate the facilities given to the schools. The school project involves rain water harvesting programmes. Schools will also be given water tanks for tapping water. A total of 3,610 students and teachers are expected to benefit from the hygiene education component.

Hi Eng. Mughal I very well agree with your observations. Tahunganh needs some assistance in substance. As far as I know, Dr. Barbara Senkwe PhD of USAID SUWASA has done such work in the South Sudan but I doubt if she is still available on her email address at bsenkwe@ard-suwasa.org as the project is winding up soon. We featured her article ‘An Emerging Fecal […]

Hi Virginia Thanks for your important work you are doing in Madagascar. The country was in focus in March this year as its president Mr. Hery Rajaonarimampianina became the first Chief of State in the world to sign a pledge in public to end open defecation. We presented a short mention of this in our Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene May-June 2015 editi […]

Hi Kris Thank you very much for your thoughts. We agree with your concerns. That's why we have given so much importance to develop the protocol so easy and cost effective which can potentially be done at the local level. However, phage therapy has been successful to treat diarrhoeal infection in human gut which is as complex as waste water system. Moreo […]

I request the users of this forum, especially the senior friends, to kindly help Hung, by responding to his survey. The survey is a bit long. He said he needs large data and a wider response. I know, PhD work requires lot of work. Like me, he is also from AIT, so, my request for his survey F H Mughal

Dear forum members, This study was done as a part of master thesis in my master degree program. Although it does have lot of initiatives to carry on this research. This business runs informally in the Bangalore city (and also might be in other cities of India), so it was a challenging task to get business details from the entrepreneurs. However, the research […]

Integration of Nutrition and WaSH programmes was the key topic discussed at the multi sectorial panel seminar hosted by Irish Aid, the IFGH and the Development Studies Association of Ireland on the 19th May.

Sustainability is without doubt one of the most burning subject matters that subsumes many of the issues that we are seeing in CLTS and wider WASH practice.On Wednesday 24th June, from 14.00-15.30 BST (convert to your time zone here), the CLTS Knowledge Hub will offer a webinar on the subject.

Over 50 female leaders from around the world recently published a declaration calling for the end of poor sanitation and hygiene in the developing world. Among those leaders are the first ladies of Madagascar and Malawi, both of whom announced the declaration in Washington, D.C.